Meath Field Names

Client Details:

Customer Name:Meath Field Names

Location:Ireland

The Problem

The Meath Field Names project is a voluntary group which was set up to record and publish the field names of County Meath along with their history, features, name, origin and folklore. With the help of a large number of volunteers the project was able to unearth a large amount of information that previously hadn't been written down and existed solely in the minds of local neighbourhoods.

Despite building up an impressive database of field names throughout the county, the group wanted to give the project an additional dimension whilst making the information more accessible to the public.

The group required a system that could be presented to the public via a custom-built website with the ability for users to query data using pre-defined searches or by creating their own searches.

What We Did

Mallon Technology provided assistance to the Meath Field Names project in two distinct phases.

Phase 1

The first phase involved the capture of geographical data relating to historical fields of land in County Meath and the subsequent linking of spatial data with a pre-populated GeoDatabase. The database was used to digitise the fields onto a map.

Phase 2

This involved the development of a bespoke, fully interactive Web Mapping System. Data from Phase 1 was imported into their hosted GIS application which utilised Open Source technologies.

Subsequently, a map was configured to display the data and pre-defined searches within the application were also created.

On Completion, we provided the project team with an iFrame code snippet for integration into the Meath Field Names website.

The Benefits

All of the features that were collected, of which there were 35,000, can be simultaneously displayed on one single map

Public access to the information has been greatly improved and now allows for additional research to be undertaken

Local residents are now easily able to identify the names of fields within their townland

The inclusion of the map in the site allows for users to identify areas where field names are yet to be collected and for them to add their knowledge to the project

The individual field names and their location have been archived for future generations to research and examine